Re-Imagining Inclusivity in Literacy Education through an Afrocentric Educational Lens for African Immigrant Youths

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Research Perspectives on Special Education and Students With Disabilities (Table 12)

Abstract

This study draws from Afrocentrism (e.g., Asante, 1990, 2000; Mazama, 2001) and transnational identity theory (Vervotec, 2001, 2009) to center Africanity in the language and literacy experiences of six sub-Saharan African immigrant student participants in an Afrocentric literacy workshop. The overarching premise is that not only can Afrocentric education be employed as a tool for interrupting hegemonic and dysfunctional tendencies in the education of African-immigrant students, but it can also serve healing and emancipatory purposes (Wynter-Hoyte & Smith, 2020). The anticipated findings will discuss the in-and-out-of-school literacy practices of African immigrant students and how inclusive education can be re-imagined to support them.

Author

• Olumide B. Ajayi, University of Georgia